January Madness results!

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

The final Knesset election results are in! (This guide may help if you can’t remember which party is which.)

1. Likud Beiteinu 31
2. Yesh Atid 19
3. Labor 15
4. Habayit Hayehudi (The Jewish Home) 12
5. Shas 11
6. United Torah Judaism 7
7. Hatenua 6
8. Meretz 6
9. United Arab List – Ta’al 4
10. Hadash 4
11. Balad 3
12. Kadima 2
13. Otzma Leyisrael
14. Am Shalem
15. Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf)
16. Koach Lehashpia
17. Eretz Hadasha
18. Hayisraelim
19. Greens
20. Dor Bonei Haaretz
21. Chaim Bechavod
22. Da’am – Workers Party
23. Tzedek Hevrati
24. Achim Anachnu (We Are Brothers)
25. Pirates
26. Kulanu Haverim Na Nach
27. Economics Party
28. Mitkademet Liberalit Democratit (Leeder)
29. Or (Light)
30. Brit Olam
31. Hatikva Leshinui
32. Moreshet Avot

(“But wait!” you say. “This is only 32 parties! I thought there were 34!” That’s right. The breakaway haredi party Netzach dropped out last week, having resolved its differences with United Torah Judaism. Atid Echad (One Future) also dropped out two days before the election – apparently pornography wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list of issues in this election.)

So first of all, congratulations to everyone who participated in January Madness 2013! Given how unpredictable Israeli elections can be, it takes a lot of courage to make a prediction and put it out there in public. No one correctly predicted all 120 Knesset seats, but everyone got some of them right.

But even more so, congratulations to the winners!!! Both Lev Polinsky in New York NY and Eyal in Israel correctly predicted 112 of the 120 Knesset seats. (While no one predicted that Yesh Atid would win 19 seats, Lev Polinsky came the closest, with 15.)

So we had to go to tiebreakers. On the first tiebreaker (which party that doesn’t make it into the Knesset will come closest?), Lev Polinsky guessed Am Shalem and Eyal guessed the Greens. Since neither picked the right-wing Otzma Leyisrael (instead, both of them incorrectly predicted that Otzma Leyisrael would win Knesset seats), we go to the second tiebreaker (which party will come in last place?). Again, no exact matches: Lev Polinsky picked Kulanu Haverim, and Eyal picked Eretz Hadasha. So now we go back to the first tiebreaker. Since Am Shalem (2nd place among the parties that didn’t make it in) did better than the Greens (7th place), Eyal wins second place, and Lev Polinsky is the 2013 January Madness champion!

Here is a message from our champion (who also wins a copy of the Comic Torah):

I am thrilled to have won, and I will print and display my winner’s certificate proudly alongside my HRH Assassin winner’s certificate – also won under BZ’s supervision. I hope he gets a job as the head of the Multi-State Lottery Association soon.

I enjoyed having an excuse to learn about all the marginal Israeli parties, like Kadima. I look forward to repeating this exercise in a few months.

Finally, I have been negligent in making my suggested contribution, so if people want to make suggestions for places to contribute in the comments, I am all ears.

And a message from our runner-up, who also wins a copy of Ghettoblaster:

I was really surprised to win. All i did was look at Wikipedia’s list of predictions, and basically used that. I changed it a bit, adding a bit to the right, which might explain why i missed 8. But i still never expected to get 93⅓%!

They had a warning that it might not add up to 120 seats, so to check, i wrote a short program to prepare it for addition – replace whitespace with +; then i pasted into Google. I’m actually a pretty good programmer; i created typeint.com and the associated projects from scratch; and i also host a forum for programmers at coders-shed.com. Speaking of TypeINT, i’m sure that some readers have needed to type in Hebrew, but were unsure how to. TypeR, by TypeINT is the perfect solution.

I hope that the 19th Kenneset proves some early predictions wrong and doesn’t end a disaster.

Finally, honorable mention goes to everyone who got the tiebreaker questions right. On the first tiebreaker question, congratulations to James Bier in Tucson AZ, David in Philadelphia, David Meyer in College Park MD, Mike Schultz in Karmiel, Tzemah, and Eliana in DC, all of whom picked Otzma Leyisrael as the top party not to make it over the threshold. On the second question, congratulations to David W. Eisen in Bet Shemesh and Ethan Tucker in Bronx NY, who predicted that Moreshet Avot would come in last. (I never could figure out what Moreshet Avot’s story was, and apparently neither could anyone else, except for 461 voters.) And since we didn’t get the news about the two parties dropping out in time to remove them from the contest entrance form, we’ll also give honorable mention to James Bier in Tucson AZ (again) and Itamar Landau in Jerusalem, both of whom picked One Future to come in last place (since one could argue that 0 is less than 461). (The most popular choice for this question was the Pirate Party. They weren’t even in the bottom seven! The lesson is never underestimate pirates.)

Thanks for playing, everyone! The next Knesset election will be Tuesday, November 7, 2017 (yes, that’s also Election Day in US jurisdictions that hold elections in odd-numbered years), unless elections are called earlier than that (which they almost certainly will).